Webspinners (Embiidina, Embioptera, Embiodea) are among the most poorly-known orders of insects. This is true despite a number of fascinating life history attributes. For example, throughout the group one can find a range of subsocial behaviors from solitary maternal care to community living with cooperative care of young and collective foraging. Females webspinners of all species are neotenous, meaning they are very much like the immature stages in lacking wings and well-developed sex organs. Males, in contrast, often (though not always) have wings and have well developed external genitalia. It is these male features on which much of the classification is based. This makes studying webspinners difficult since males are rarely encountered and females lack features needed to tell species apart. Fortunately, webspinners are easily reared in captivity using nothing more than dead leaves as a substrate with grocery store lettuce as food. Remarkably, nearly all species can be reared successfully this way, and in this manner their behavior and life history can be easily examined and males can be acquired for identification. Because of the winglessness of webspinner females, they are poor dispersers. They effectively have to walk or disperse through passive means. As a result, many Embioptera species are very narrowly endemic.
Perhaps the most spectacular life history attribute of the group is the one from which webspinners get their common name. All webspinners, including males, females and young, produce silk from glands in the front legs. They use this silk to create galleries in which they live. Often these galleries are extremely complex with areas for foraging, protection, and laying eggs or rearing their young. Depending on the species, some have small galleries using little silk, whereas others have huge colonies with many individuals. Webspinners live in many habitats including on the surfaces of trees, under rocks or in leaf litter.